


Sweetness

by boniface



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Harry D. S. Goodsir has a crush, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 08:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boniface/pseuds/boniface
Summary: A tumblr prompt.Goodsir + "a stolen kiss" (or Harry thinks some gay thoughts)





	Sweetness

It was just a peck, hardly a kiss by any standard, well, perhaps at least not by Harry’s brother’s standard. Robert wouldn’t have called a kiss and Harry couldn’t either. He shouldn’t have seen it, in the first place, if there was anything to see. He hadn’t seen anything—not really. Well, he wouldn’t —couldn’t—swear to have seen it, if anyone asked, not that they would, because it was nothing to talk about. It was nothing, nothing at all.

And Harry had work to do. He had patients to tend to. Why, the hammocks in the sickbay grew fuller by the day as they wintered here… He wouldn’t deign to think of something as unimportant as this.

Except he kept seeing it, fast and chaste, again and again in his head as stuck as a particularly vexing rhyme, as he treated Best’s frostbitten fingers until he found him wrapping up the wrong hand. The seaman, perplexed, laughed and teased Harry. But equally perplexed, Harry could not speak the truth of it, obviously. Best need not know what his fellows got up to, or how it inexplicably occupied Harry’s mind to the point of distraction. He could only correct his mistake with an affable smile and send Mr. Best on his way.

Alone, the thoughts persisted. Harry had once seen a painting (Robert would surely call him ridiculous for perseverating on this), or at least a a woodcut of the painting in any case, of such a kiss. Young lovers sharing a moment in half-privacy, he with his boyish cheek and she with her innocence. There was an urgency, a secrecy, and a torn desire in what he saw as in the painting.

And there was a sweetness.

That was what ate at Harry. He had always thought of that sort of thing, between men, in the very few times he had thought of it, as something done brutishly in dark alleyways and in ships’ holds. But this was a kiss. Here it was two sailors with chapped lips against a rough and ruddy cheek and it was captivating.

Perhaps, it would be lovely, to kiss and be kissed even here, Harry found himself thinking. Especially here, where it was wild and white. Harry saw the beauty in it. Maybe it was more like awe. It was something great and magnificent, and not always kind. But kindness could exist here, amongst themselves. Surely, Mr. Collins was lucky to have someone to kiss like that. Maybe, perhaps one could feel lucky to receive such a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> The painting Harry is thinking of is The Stolen Kiss by Fragonard which is kinda the only reference to the prompt...
> 
> If you want to send me a prompt on [tumblr](francienolan.tumblr.com/ask) that would be cool :)


End file.
